Bugs In The Mirror
by Chandra
Summary: A/U: I am always watching, always there in silent shadows and whisps of smoke, but no longer content to just watch this masochistic romance play out. But I have to be sure, positive that this is what He would do, He is everything I have become. R
1. Charcoal

Alright everyone, I is here. Wondered over to depart my disturbing reality of angst and true psychological trauma upon you. Oh and Reviews are wanted, because if you don't review then I'll just give up on this one. Have decided that the original style of the story did not do it justice, actually Rei's character is very hard to get down correctly. Time for a change.  
  
~...~ =Thoughts "..." =speech ***** =scene change  
  
Bugs In The Mirror- "Charcoal details"  
  
~Chandra  
  
~I've watched you, each day through the glass. The colors have all turned to gray. Remember you cried and they laughed. Can't you all just go away..?~  
~What kind of person lives in a place like this?~ He would ask himself this daily as the sun burned down upon dirty streets outside, waking up the sounds and smells that were the warehouse district. Like most of his generation he was lost, a fallen angel in a concrete Hell searching for the answers to his sins.  
  
One floor below him in one of the less than efficient apartments the day's melodrama of masochistic romance played itself out in a rhythm of shouts and crashes. The tradition seven-thirty fight followed him through is daily routine and the two room disaster he called home. Then it came to a climax, the thud of something soft and fleshy hitting the wall before sliding down to the floor below accompanied the slam of his door. Stifled sobs followed him down the cracked and worn stairwell, giving new depth to the graffiti scrawled across its walls.  
  
Somewhere inside Rei felt his green eyes harden like the emeralds that shared their color as he passed her, curled form of tangled hair and shuttering shoulders. For an instant the emptiness inside him was filled with the uncontrollable fires of hate, he had seen it all before. She was nothing more than another victim using her pain to justify her existence. Oh she would pack her things, swear she is leaving this time, then sit on their bed and wait for him to come home tonight.  
  
"Pathetic..." The word fell harshly from his lips in an expression of utter disgust as he walked past.  
  
"..Wh..What..?" Her sobs stilled themselves as she looked up and into impassive green eyes. "How...how dare you? You don't know what it's like..!" She recovered quickly, how could he know what this was like, he was just like all of them. How dare he, couldn't he see her tears and hear her cries every morning, why didn't he save he from this, why wouldn't anyone save her?  
  
"Hm." The noise came with a sharp breath of air from his throat to stifle the laugh forming behind his lips. Slowly he kneeled down, green eyes staring into hers as words that weren't his own slid out from between his lips in tones of satin and razor blades. "If things are so horrible then end them..." Delicate fingers reached out and brushed back a tangled mass of her hair as he continued. "Why not just end this, is this." Green eyes glance around the dirty and decrepit hallway, he eyes following his to focus on the reality of her situation. "What you wanted for yourself, things never turn out right, but you can always stop them from getting any worse. Stop waiting for some angel to save you..." With that he rose and walked away, an easy grace born of contempt filling his movements.  
  
Past the pushers, whore, and murders he walked...each step haunted by the shadows that tempted his mind. ~Have I become like them now...~ The thought was not an easy one to bare, it's persistent question chasing the growl of his engine through the streets. *****  
  
The reproduced racket that passed for the late bell echoed through the hallways, chasing the final stragglers back into their classrooms as he walked through the double glass doors of the school. The empty yellow and green tiled hallways always seemed cold no matter what the weather was, reminding him of the sterile institutions he knew so well. Most people don't realize that they are safer in an institution than at a school these days. Institutions kept people like him restrained, schools just offered him a new hunting grounds. The idea brought a smile to his lips.  
  
"Where are you supposed to be, young man?" A voice over accustomed to authority interrupted his thoughts and challenged his course.  
  
With the same smile gracing his lips, Rei continues walking through the empty halls.  
  
"Stop right there!" The voice echoes as steps hurry to catch up with him. What's your name boy?"  
  
With a final step Rei stops, still not turning to face the man. Laughter threatens to boil out from between his lips at this little game, but instead all that comes are the same tones of razors and satin. "Rei Kashino. And I am going to the bathroom..." There's another pause before he turns to face the man, looking down to meet those small angry eyes. "Want to join me?" *****  
  
Smoke curls in tendrils and wisps around him as the red flare of his cigarette jumps to life between his fingertips. Green eyes stare out from the cool shadows and into the sunlit world of activity, their careless guise sliding into the torment of his thoughts. His fellow students, he would never refer to them as his peers, gather in groups across the small field to spread the day's news. As an after thought he brushes a few strands of his overgrown pale blonde hair back from his face. Rei had always been the beautiful one, leaving me to watch his reckless and uncompromising fall.  
  
Blue eyes glanced quickly up from the pad in her lap, before returning to the near desperate movements of her hand, afraid of loosing the scene before her if she watched too long. The metallic gray lines absorbed her into their slowly forming world. The smooth lines that formed his face flowing from the pencil between her fingers, trying desperately to capture the mixture of beauty and pain that made her heart constrict in her chest with each glance, leaving her awash with the nervous energy that normally comes when she has done something bad. But what is bad about capturing him forever on her paper? She pauses for a moment, the penciled eyes holding hers to the paper. Something showed in their portrait depths that the sunlight park hid from reality, and for that instant the lines draw her down into a drowning world of green. Gasping she fights her way out, the spell breaking around her and leaving her lungs burning for air, and her wide blue eyes meet impassively cold green.  
  
"I...I...I'm sorry...-" her voice trails off into a defeated silence as his eyes leave her face and focus on the pad clutched tightly to her stomach.  
  
"Let me see it." His voice carries on the breeze in whispers and shadows, devoid of the cruelty that the other students normally address her with.  
  
Trembling Kira looks down, her blue eyes widening with sudden panic before she looks up again, her body tense with the need to run. The pad slides from her hands as she stands, the rough surface of the bench catching the fabric of her dress as she stands. The pad is forgotten as she runs away from those cold green eyes, long blonde hair streaming out behind her. Her heart rises in her throat making her limbs feel slow and heavy as the instinct to flee takes over. Her small fingers clench in with the effort, but she can't go any faster, the thick green grass seems to pull against her feet and pool her down to the ground so that he can catch her. Afraid to look back she continues to run, her breath a sour burning in her throat by the time she reaches the small apartment called 'home.'  
  
Forlorn the cardboard pad glares up at him with its white paper as Rei watches her go, picking up the pad on impulse, something unfamiliar surfacing in empty eyes. For that moment he feels guilt, a heavy weight that forces his hands to keep the pad rather than discard it into the trash. *****  
  
The hallway was a frigid burning cold that bit at his skin after the summer's heat and basketballs exertion. A weary sigh fills the yellow tiled emptiness; yellow tile and green paint, so reminiscent of modern institution décor it makes him homesick. .  
  
Long fingers catch the latch on his locker, its metallic click a scream in the after-hours desolation. As if on command, a white pad falls to the floor when he grabs his coat, it's cardboard back striking his foot then the floor in a plea to be noticed. It is her pad, kept from this morning and their quick meeting. Once again that subtle feeling creeps into the confines of his thoughts, driving him to retrieve the wrinkled cardboard...driving his fingers to slide through the pencil stained white pages. Rei stops, green eyes fixed on a picture, staring into pencil replicas of his own eyes.  
  
I wonder what secrets are held in the glowing white pages, the curiosity seems to infect him as well for he flips its cover open and begins to page through the drawings. Most of them are still life representations, obviously uninspired project of an art class or two. Then nestled in their emotionless stares a mother holds her child, forever held in that moment by pencil renderings. He stares at it for a moment, fingers brushing carefully over the paper and led only to come away with a metallic gray stain. Then he turns the page and I gasp, the sound echoing unexpectedly through the hallway, loud enough to startle him for a moment. Green eyes look up, their depths guarded, but he doesn't notice me only the small crowd filtering in through the double doors at the end of the hall. With a glare he flips the pad shut and walks away from them and their praising cries with only an absent wave of his hand to single he had herd them.  
  
The image still remained, burned into my mind from the single fleeting glance. She had drawn Rei as other see him...but in the background, out of sight of his eyes, she drew me...drew us together. Though the action was unintentional, it is the first time I have seen us together since he died. I never knew how much I would miss seeing us, until HE died and left me to pick up the pieces. *****  
  
The labyrinth of hallways lead us through the school, I wonder if he even knew what lead him to the second floor and the door to the art room. But there he stood, the pad in hand, facing the wooden door that opened to the art studio.  
  
"Is this the hand you draw with..." The man's voice reaching him through the wooden barrier, too old to be a students and too sure of itself to be welcome. "You are a very talented girl..." 


	2. No Colors Anymore

A/N- Well here goes chapter two...Let's see if this one evokes any response in you all... This section is horribly disappointing so far; definitely need more readers here. The lyrics are from "Candy Tree" by All About Eve. I recommend listening to any songs I use for opening/inside quotes; they may help to understand the psychosis and they're also the sound track to this story. Was considering posing a challenge to my readers, if any of you can guess who is narrating this story I'll do a fic for you or something (entirely your choice of topic and plot). Want to see if my clues are too subtle.  
  
~...~ Thoughts "..." Speech ***** Scene Change '.' Narrators Thoughts  
  
Bugs In The Mirror- No Colors Anymore  
  
~Chandra  
  
~Well it's an underhand Kind of wonderland - She can't find the door; Because he's keeping her as a prisoner Lost forevermore... ~  
  
We stood outside the art studio, his hand reaching for the door knob as words filtered out in clips and phrases, turning the afternoons sweat to ice on his skin.  
  
"Is this the hand you draw with..." The man's voice echoed through the wood, too old to be a students and too sure of itself to be welcome. "You are a very talented girl..."  
  
The click on the door was silent, his knuckles white around its metal handle as those emerald eyes pulling me to the surface. The girl sits, still as the statue she draws, her fingers clenching the pencil she holds. Blue eyes stare straight ahead from a shivering body; in that moment she looks like a wild thing caught in waiting for the predators jaws to close. Above her a teacher leans, his right hand sliding slowly down the neck of her shirt while his left trails over her shirt and breasts.  
  
He coughs, the sound a rasping growl in the studio's close space, startling the teacher, who jumps back from her, and turning those terrified blue eyes towards him. For a moment the light of hope sparkles pleading in their depths, but it dims in the face of uncertainty. He moves slowly, each step a careful violence that slips around them caught up in the silent rustle of cotton pants and shifting pale hair. I catch his reflection in the window, green eyes burning with controlled fury.  
  
"What are you doing here Kashino, the school's been closed for two hours now." The teacher turns his embarrassment into anger, hoping to frighten Rei away.  
  
"Perhaps I was thinking of joining the art club." His fingers trail over paintings and furniture as her circles them, fingers finding the smooth plastic casing of a razor. "You never know, I might have a hidden talent." Emerald eyes turn towards the teacher, and I watch the color drain from his frantic face. I can almost feel the razor between my fingers as Rei moves towards the man, the steel blade catching a stray ray of sunlight.  
  
"Wha...what do you think you're doing Kashino." The teacher yells, the situation slipping quickly into the chaos of war.  
  
"Me? Nothing, just sharpening a pencil...It's not like I was thinking of cutting you or anything..." His eyes betray the lie for what it is. Each movement of the razor deliberate as it shaves away pieces of wood, his eyes never leaving the man's face. "Don't you have rounds to make...other students to...check on?"  
  
Kira's eyes stare unseeingly at the scene before her, her lips moving to form words that could find no sound to express. Finally as the door shut, and the teacher left her eyes focused on Rei, his fingers trailing over a marble statue used as a still life model.  
  
"Mars..." green eyes glance up at her, making her thoughts freeze before returning to the statue. His eyes were so soft in that moment, so unlike the Rei she had seen moments earlier. "The statue is of Mars, the god of War..." She continues not even sure if he is listening, but needing to fill the silence around them.  
  
"For some one so violent, he has such a beautiful face." Stunned Kira watches Rei lean into the statue, his lips brushing over the statues cold marble lips. Through the red rays of the sunset stain his blonde hair and surrounding them in a halo bloody light.  
  
"Hey Rei, what are you doing in here?" Tatsuya leans his head through the door, waving at Rei. "Quit playing around, let's go!"  
  
"I'll be there in a minute!" Rei yells after his friend before turning to Kira. From a distance I watch, feeling further from him than ever, as he smile at her before setting the pad on the table in front of her.  
  
"You dropped this..." he whisper, and I watch heartbroken as he parts with us. "And don't worry about anything...I'll protect you, Kira." *****  
  
We are in the bathroom no, and no longer can I stay silent. The words bubble out from between my lips with the smoke I have grown accustomed to. "She is not like us." My eyes stare into the mirror, focused on our reflection in that moment. "She's innocent, soft, fragile...just like Sei was." It feels strange to use Sei's name again, it has been years since I remember speaking it. A name that became lost with the memories when HE died.  
  
"My brother is dead...Why don't you just go away?" He hisses smoke at out reflection, the grey mist pushing off the mirror in a curling cloud. His words are so predictable, my lips form then even as he speaks each syllable...it is like we are already one persona nd just don't realize it.  
  
"Because we are the same." I reach out to him, but instead of the soft skin I remember there is only cold glass. "Why do you deny me even now?" My hand falls away, the chill of the mirror clinging to my fingertips. His green eyes glare at me from the glass, eyes that I have dreamed about ever since we were separated.  
  
"No." The word breaks my heart to dust that is blown away by the fury of his anger. His fist shatters the glass, sending fragments of us to the floor along with the glowing embers of his cigarette. "We are nothing alike." His voice is quieter now, the first violence calmed to a steady story that shifts with an uneasy peace beneath his tones, leaving spoiled honey tones to fall in thick drops like the blood from his fingers. "Leave me alone." *****  
  
Rei's hands tighten over the hand brakes, trying desperately to slow his escape from me. Nothing. Again he tries, his foot pushing down on the emergency brake as the back of a semi-truck speeds closer to him. Desperately he twists the bike between himself and the truck, the emergency brake kicking in a second too late as the rough surface of the road rises up to meet him. Concrete tears through him jeans, scraping away a layer of skin as he rolls away from the bike. Tires scream leaving the smell of burning rubber in their wake as the front tire blows out in an explosion of rubber and air. Sparks jump from the wet pavement as the bike slides away from him, the metal protests as it is wedged under the back of the truck. Helplessly I watch all this, my fingers reach for something to hold onto but find only air and concrete around me. 'No...Rei!" The scream forms wordlessly in my mind, drown out by the cry of metal and grinding brakes as the truck comes to an abrupt stop. Red light washes over Rei as he struggles to pick himself up off the road, testing each limb for movement. The red is all I see, As I feel my fingers curl painfully in leather gloves.  
  
"Hey...Hey you...Are you ok kid?" The man's frantic voice calls out to Rei as hejumps out of the cab. But Rei doesn't hear him now, as we walk away into the wet streets. I can feel the shock setting into his body as we walk bad to the rundown apartment he insists on call home. *****  
  
I hear locks click open; first the deadbolt, then the lock in the door handle, then finally the chain rattles away and the wooden door opens. A man stands there fumbling with his glasses, it is the teacher from earlier, Mr Yoshiro. For an instant he recognizes me, then the color drains away leaving his skin a sickly white. "How-What are you doing here?"  
  
"You tried to kill Rei..." my voice surprises me; its tones almost unsteady with my anger. I sometimes wonder if my voice sounds as mad as my smile appears, tonight I have my answer.  
  
"I...You...-" He stammers, his mind following mine down the tortured trail that breeds understanding.  
  
"I can't let you hurt Rei, Mr. Yoshiro." My gloved hands curl around his throat, leaving trails of wet grim from Reis clothing and the road. I have never strangled any one before.and for a moment I wonder at the feel of his flesh under my fingertips, at how his mouth twists as his lungs fight to draw in air. The blood vessils in his eyes strain making the white bloodshot with the stress. I have to laugh, he looks like a fish drowning in air with his mouth flapping open and his eyes wide as though he could breath through them. His fingers claw at my clothing, curling weakly around my gloved wrists as he fights to live.  
  
"Why?" His mouth forms the word as his hands slide weakly away from my wrists. It takes a full five minutes for someone to loose conciseness, and another five minutes to make sure their dead. I don't have another six minutes to wait for him to finish; Rei will be waking up soon. My thumbs push into the space just above his collarbone, crushing his wind pipe and allowing nature to finish what I started. Still smiling I let his body fall to the floor, his hand now clutch desperately at his neck.  
  
"It's your fault I woke up..." My voice is a low growl of pleasure, making me feel at home in the humid night. *****  
  
"Did you hear? A girl's hushed voice whispers urgently as she tugs persistently at Rei's shirtsleeve in an attempt to get his attention.  
  
"Hear what?" Rei sigh impatiently, wincing as he turns in his seat to face her. His bruised muscles protest as he shifts, the scrapes on his legs rubbing against his pants as if to remind him of their existence.  
  
"Mr Yoshiro was murdered last night! They say he was strangled...I can't believe something like that would happen here. I scared to even walk home now."  
  
Her words drift past him, fragments making their way into his thoughts before being dismissed. His attention is focused past her on Kira's downcast face and shy eyes. At the news of Mr. Yoshiro's death Kira looks up, gasping as her eyes meet Rei's.  
  
"Rei...Rei...Aren't you listening to me? Mr. Yoshiro was murdered." The girl leans back persistently, blocking Rei's sight and raising the whining level of her voice to an even more annoying level.  
  
"So? What do you expect me to do about it." Rei turns away from her irritated.  
  
"Would you walk me home today? I'm scared to go by myself." She continues unfazed by his irritation.  
  
"I'm sorry Shari, I can't."  
  
As if on cue her lips form an overdone pout, "Please Rei..."  
  
"I'm busy..." He pauses, then smiles, looking back at Kira. "Didn't I tell you, I joined the Art Club.  
  
Kira's pencil falls to the floor, causing Shari to turn and stare at her. Blushing Kira fumbles at grabbing it, her blue eyes tight with embarrassment.  
  
"What's wrong with you?"  
  
"Nn.Nothing." Kira stammers, not meeting the eyes of her accuser but instead staring down at the notebook in front of her.  
  
From behind Shari Rei laughs, watching the color continue to rise on Kira's sheels.  
  
"If I didn't know better I'd thing you liked Rei. But that's impossible...You don't even like boys, do you?" Shari continues, her tones filled with cruel mocking.  
  
"Shari, stop being such a bitch." Rei's voice cuts through her torment of Kira before he stands up. Deliberately he walks over to where Kira sits and picks up her books. "Let's go, I'm bored."  
  
*****  
  
~Drea~ Thank you! ~Rhiannon~ This does start out a little confusing, but it'll get better, I think. ~Lea~ will work on the dialog, maybe. And if I continued this as a nonMARS fic there would be one less fic in the area, and MARS can use all the fic it can get on here...in my opinion of course. ~Skittles~ Good. Some one who like my description ( Thank You! ~CatsOnMars~ Glad you liked that line, and it's not over yet, this story is just taking me forever to get down the way I want it. ~Berserker~ Thanks, hope you do like it. And here's a brand new chappie for you! 


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